A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

15 MINUTEMANS OF FAME
If your ears burn when someone, somewhere talks shit about you, what happens when you're treated to gobs of free press? Guess we'll have to ask Mission Viejo retired CPA-turned-co-founder of the immigrant chasing Minutemen-turned 48th congressional district indie candidateJim Gilchrist about such sensations, if he ever stops long enough from the whirlwind he's on. In the past two days, he's been written up in the MoonieWashington Times (for trying to ride his Minuteman fame into Congress), those knuckle-draggers at the Weekly Standard (for turning his sights from undocumented folks to the people who illegally hire them, a stand that could win him bipartisan support come election time), and reams of catfish wraps in the Midwest, where he's engaged in speaking engagements at anti-immigration whoop-dee-doos. But he's not just getting attention from the media hounds. There are the other 17 candidates in the House race to consider. For instance, there are Republicans like state Sen. John Campbell (R-Blandland), who when he isn't devising ways to collect better endorsements than former Assemblywoman Marilyn Brewer (I see your McCain and raise you a Schwarzenegger!), may be wondering how to prevent a split vote that would see an independent like Gilchrist take the prize, as was mused upon in the Moonie paper and OC Blog (where we read of the most-precious endorsement of all: BOB DORNAN!!! for Jim Gilchrist. Yeah, thanks to the favor there, Bob). Also taking a long look at Gilchrist is a Democrat candidate for the seat that opened with Chris Cox's ascension to SEC commissioner, teacher Bea Foster, who today threatened to sue Gilchrist for his ballot designation as Minuteman Movement Founder. Foster, who is getting some help making hay of all this from anti-anti-immigrant rabble rousing Greenie Duane Roberts, cites election code that stipulates such designations are meant to show a candidate's "principal profession, vocation, or occupation." Foster claims the Secretary of State is reviewing the matter, but if that office rules in Gilchrist's favor, Foster is threatening to sue to the state election watchdog. Stay tuned.

Posted Aug. 25, 10:47 a.m.

YOU DISTORT, WE DERIDE
Ah, those Fox News hounds. Previously known mostly for kissing White House butt, condemning mommies who lost their sons in a war based on lies and heeeeeeee-lariously claiming to be impartial, Rupert Murdoch's wet dreamland can now add innocent home destroyer to its list of misdeeds. The Los Angeles Timesbroke the story in today's issue, picked up by the wire services internationally, that a La Habra family has been terrorized after their house was wrongly identified on an Aug. 7 Foxcast as the home of a terrorist. Randy and Ronnell Vorick have had profanities shouted at them, photos taken of their house and vandalism in the form of the word terrist being spraypainted on their abode, which says all you need to know about Fox News viewers. "I'm scared to go to work and leave my kids home," Randy Vorick told the Times. "I call them every 30 minutes to make sure they're OK." Ex-federal prosecutor John Loftus, who apparently slept with CNN's Nancy Grace through the law school class Innocent Until Proven Guilty, let alone Accuracy 101, gave Vorick's address on the Fox News show as that of Iyad Hilal, a 56-year-old grocer the FBI is investigating for alleged terror-group ties. But Hilal moved out of that house three years ago. Fox claims Loftus has been reprimanded--code for having to give Hannity sponge baths for a month. And the genius and the network both apologized to the family.

Posted Aug. 24, 7:27 p.m.

WHAT'S IN THE OFFINGClockwork's poor little ears are bleeding from all the media chatter about extreme-Right nutbar televangelist Pat Robertson's call for the assassination of Venezuela's president. Some have compared his suggestion on his Christian Broadcasting Network The 700 Club to the fatwas issued by radical Muslim clerics, and that former presidential candidate Robertson should be subject to the same treatment anyone else who makes terrorist threats would be. The condemnation has been so vehement--coming from everyone from the Rev. Jesse Jackson to Fidel Castro to even, if ever so gently, the White House and Donald Rumsfeld--that Robertson today backed off from his earlier statement, saying that people "misinterpreted" him and essentially claiming that when he said he wanted Venezuela's popularly elected but leftist president Hugo Chavez taken out, he didn't necessarily mean taken out. Never mind that his direct quote was, "You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it." Oh, yeah, you were very vague there, Godboy. Gotcha. Kissinger oughta try this argument the next time someone tries to arrest him for masterminding the taking out (but he didn't mean taking out) of Chilean Commander-in-Chief Gen. Rene Schneider and quite possibly that country's former president Salvador Allende during those fun-lovin' Nixon years.

Now, while we agree with everything the Robertson critics are leveling, that it's pretty goddamn hypocritical for a man who spouts the words of Jesus to in the same breath issue death warrants, we've noticed something sorely missing in all this: the full context. For instance, if you go to Media Matters, you'll see Robertson's full quote from his Aug. 22 broadcast all right, but here is the part that the watchdogs boldfaced: